Innocence
by Virodeil
Summary: A first-person journey spanning Eragon to Inheritance and beyond: Murtagh was a big brother for that wide-eyed, brown-eyed boy before it was ever a fact, and he was determined to conduct that self-appointed duty well by any means in spite of (or perhaps because of) what fate had thrown his way. But Eragon was never the easiest little brother to care for and take care of, indeed!
1. Innocence

Story Title: Innocence  
Story Author: Eärillë

Chapter Summary: Murtagh was a big brother for that wide-eyed, brown-eyed boy before it was ever a fact, without even knowing what the boy's name was. But indeed on the face of honest innocence, reason and caution would flee, especially for a bitter heart that longed for open warmth.  
Chapter Rating: G  
Chapter Warnings: none  
Chapter Genres: Character Study, Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Spiritual, Stream-of-Consciousness, Vignette  
Chapter Characters: Eragon II, Murtagh, Saphira II  
Chapter Point of View: First-person limited: Murtagh  
Chapter Word Count: 716 in MS Word 2003

Chapter Notes: The scene and underlined quotations are taken from _Eragon_, the first book of _The Inheritance Cycle_, from the chapter titled "Murtagh." Murtagh's bearing and reaction during the one-sided introduction always fascinates me. I also find it odd that for such a cautious man who is also on the run, he would readily give his name to Eragon without any apparent hesitation. Plus, I have always been … a little bit incredulous that such a proud man would stoop to being a "pack-horse" and shield to Eragon, even if the said person was a Dragon Rider, and would still try to protect him later although they stood on opposite sides. So I tried to formulate _why_ he would react and behave that way. I hope you'll like it, although there's no action in it. (I warned you, it's a character study.)

–

1. Innocence

I have never thought that meeting a Dragon Rider could be like this. Of course, my only examples were Galbatorix and Father, and they were never good examples even as I took them as such. But now …

The dragon is certainly fearsome, beautiful and noble-looking, like everybody has always said or whispered to me or around me about those creatures.

But the boy who has just claimed unspokenly that _he_ is _her_ _Rider_ …

People said Dragon Riders of old wore fine clothes and finer armour.

The boy wears tattared farmer clothes and no armour whatsoever.

People said Dragon Riders of old were adept at magic, adept at fighting skills, powerful and nearly invinsible.

The boy looks quite hesitant, vulnerable and weaponless, and he and his dragon have just lost to a pair of Ra'zac rather easily.

People said that Dragon Riders of old looked majestic and kindly-impassive, talked eloquently, and behaved distantly.

The boy looks like a peasant, behaves like a peasant, and talks like a peasant. He wears his thoughts and emotions on his sleeve, and seems to approach everything with wonder and openness.

But somehow, I like this version of a Dragon Rider more than those in the stories. It presents an almost … ideal image, though rather odd.

And the boy's face …

His _nose_ is _my_ _mother's_. His _cheeks_ are _hers_. His _built_ is _hers_. His _gaze_ is _too much_ like _hers_. His _hair_ is like _hers_ as well.

_Who_ is _he_?

Did she leave me a younger brother? – No, she would have told me or left me a clue, or I would have known when she embraced me in the rare times we could be together.

Did she have a relative unknown to me who bore a son? – A possibility.

Is the boy a completely-unrelated stranger that just somehow bears some inheritance of my mother? – Most likely.

But it … hurts. I would rather not admit it even to myself, but it _does_ hurt: to know that a complete stranger, a common passer-by, even though he is a Dragon Rider, could so easily mimic her look and bearing, the legacy that I have been yearning to get but only have in small measures.

And those eyes, wide and suspicious but so open and hesitant …

It would be quite easy for me to invision him as the sibling that I never have, to help him and trust him and accompany him and think that I am protecting my younger brother.

But is it _wise_?

It would be quite heartening if I would have a mission, a hope to cling on to, beyond just "run away from the palace and search for a possible safe place." It would warm my heart immensely, if I were to open myself again to another person, after that damned knife-throwing, back-stabbing soldier killed Tornac.

But is it _possible_?

But the boy looks so open, so vulnerable, so honest, so confused.

So innocent.

"Who are you?" he is asking.

So uncertain, so … weak, so tired of being suspicious, unaccustomed to how cruel the world is.

No, I do not need guessworks. I do not need fantacies, dreams, reasons, motives.

He has won me over _completely_ to him without realising it, without knowing how much power he has over me, without understanding how hard others far more richer, far more powerful, far more dignified and eloquent have tried to do the same throughout the bitter years of my life with little success.

"Murtagh," I say softly, to him and to myself. I barely manage to retain my bearing.

I have _never_ given my name to a complete stranger before this.

And it is quite frightening that I _know_ I will do almost _everything_ for him, far beyond giving him my identity.

But it is _indeed_ heartening, somehow, that I will finally be useful, even if I will be just a shield against misfortune for this boy.

This _innocent_ boy.

Because I wish him to stay like this: open and honest and innocent. And I will do almost _anything_ to keep it this way.

Because then he will show me, and show this harsh world perhaps, that not everything has gone bad.

Not everything is _tainted_ and evil and cruel and cold.

Because something stays _innocent_.


	2. Irony Part the First

Story Title: Innocence  
Story Author: Eärillë

Chapter Summary: Murtagh was a protector and caretaker for his self-claimed little brother, and he was not ever going to change that decision; but it was hard to maintain it, when he realised who the old man that he had helped take care of really was. Because after all, even for a bitter heart that would curse the "devil" that spawned him, buried inside was the primal sense of belonging a child reserved for his parent.  
Chapter Rating: PG-13  
Chapter Warnings: character death, scene and memory of dead bodies, sensitive topics  
Chapter Genres: Angst, Character Study, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Spiritual, Stream-of-Consciousness, Vignette  
Chapter Characters: Eragon II, Galbatorix, Morzan, Murtagh  
Chapter Point of View: First-person limited: Murtagh  
Chapter Word Count: 1,070 in MS Word 2003

Chapter Notes: The scene and underlined quotations are taken from _Eragon_, the first book of _The Inheritance Cycle_, from the chapter titled "Diamond Tomb." Again, I warn you, this piece is a character study of Murtagh, so no actions too in this particular chapter. And I hope I did as well as last time, although I hold no expectation of it. Please tell me what you think? Oh, and a second caution for you readers: the "sensitive topics" in the "Warnings" section is for Murtagh's thoughts about his father. Please, if you disagree with me, refrain from vulgar swearwords. I always wanted to explore this side of Murtagh as well: why he said "my father" just as often as "Morzan" for a man purported to hate his father with his very being, why Morzan would do so much for him and Selena for a man purported to be all evil and unfeeling, and why Murtagh was so enamoured of Zar'roc while the blade was the one who had given him that scar.

–

2. Irony Part the First

"It Was."

The soft-spoken confirmation, to my question that was born out of morbid curiosity, troubles me deeply. I do not know why. I should have been glad that I am no longer under the shadow of my father, that Brom killed him; got rid of a monster, as people said it, whispering fertively behind my back or telling me outright with contempt or malicious relish.

But I am not.

I cannot, cannot be happy, be glad, be relieved of it, despite everything, despite my words – strong or scathing and all outwardly unfeeling – uttered to those people in response to their twisted congratulations of his death.

He was my _father_. He _is_ still my father, even if death has taken me at last and my body is just as cold and still and unresponsive as his was.

I cannot deny it.

I do not wish to deny it.

Blood cannot be denied. Blood should not be denied. It is just … wrong.

How bitter and ironic fate can be, that my self-proclaimed little brother's loved one is the person who murdered my father.

How morbidly hilarious and yes, ironic, that Brom killed my father and I indirectly, accidentally killed Brom in return.

How acrid and bitter it feels in my mouth now, the fact that I was more often than not only one of the many gawking, judging by-standers in my father's life, while I did so much for his killer in his hour of need.

How painful and _more_ than herendously ironic, that I eased the passage of my father's killer to death, while my father himself died alone and so far away, left lying as a worthless carcass in an abandoned warehouse for half a day before a soldier from the King's troops _accidentally_ _stumbled_ on his corpse.

Eragon has been shedding copious amounts of tears for _him_.

I cannot even pretend to mourn him or be overly somber for Eragon's sake. I hope my concern for the lad is interpreted as some sign of empathy to the killer by him.

Because I cannot … I cannot …

A lump chokes my airway. My sight flickers with what might be tears.

No, no, it is not good. I must be strong for the both of us. Eragon is injured, and we still need to find sanctuary somewhere, and it will be a long and arduous process.

I force my hands not to clench around the pair of rabbits that I have killed for our breakfast too tightly.

– Cold, dead flesh: like my father's slack hands and slack cheeks when the King allowed me to have a private audience with his _corpse_. –

I tighten my mental shields: desperate for something I can control, desperate to control my emotions; desperate for something I can protect, desperate for the protection my father left me.

Because he taught me this form of defence since I was very small, placed some around my mind in fact, from my blurry memories of toddlerhood. He always told me to prize my mind and heart and soul, even if I could not protect my body. I never knew why he would try his best to plant that concept in such a small child by any way.

And now I cannot ask him.

Because of _Brom_.

"Are you one of the Varden?" Eragon is asking. Pain twists in my chest and in my gut. The _Varden_!

The varden equals _Brom_.

"I'm running away, like you." I say to him. I am running away, because Urû'baen was not my home, never my home. I have no home now, never had it any longer since the people who formed it died one by one. What is the difference between I and the filthy, rag-clad street urchins in Dras Leona then?

"I do not belong to either the Varden or the Empire. Nor do I owe allegiance to any man but myself."

Brom killed the last person I belonged to. He killed the only person I would owe allegiance to by duty – by right – of blood, however foul he might seem to people's eyes, or even to mine.

Perhaps this is also why the King was always wary of interacting with me, wary of entrusting things to me, until that fateful moment – that I bungled up by running away anyhow.

Eragon looks askance, hurt, betrayed, as I tell him that I met him that ill-chanced evening because I had been using the Ra'zac's trail to track for the new Dragon Rider. Perhaps he thought that I should have come sooner, saved his adored mentor?

I smile grimly.

I have no mentor, no home. He has no mentor, no home. It is a balanced situation. It is how I would prefer it to be, in this cruel, twisted, bitterly-ironic world. Just he and I: two young men abused by fate, two brothers united by the same abuser.

Because even the man that threw his blade onto my back in _the single time_ when I was _three_ years old let me sit and play quietly in his lap, in his arms, for the _entirety_ of nearly _four_ years.

"I thought you wanted to kill the Ra'zac," he accuses me.

I am sorry, Eragon, I am sorry. I cannot help it. I did my best, for the both of us.

"I do, but if I had, I never would have met you."

And on hindsight, if I had, my father's killer would still be alive to kill me as well, and Eragon would never have trusted me, let me take care of him, let me fill the hole that used to be my family.

"No stranger's life is more important than my own or those of that I cherish, and I shall keep us safe no matter what," my father said just as often when I asked him – did not dare complain to him – about the utter secrecy and rigorous training and tight protections that always surrounded our lives – my father's, my mother's, and my own. Now I understand it, and apply it to my own life, while I vowed that his views on things would not be mine: evidence that blood ties is stronger than any vow could be, perhaps.

But it is ironic, very ironic indeed, that the first person I shall apply it to is the one who adores my father's killer.

Very, very ironic …

I am sorry, Father.


	3. Irony Part the Second

Story Title: Innocence  
Story Author: Eärillë

Chapter Summary: What did Murtagh think of Zar'roc when he saw it again after years of believing it lost and stolen, and in the wrong hand no less? What did he think of Eragon, subsequently?  
Chapter Rating: PG-13  
Chapter Warnings: sensitive topics, violence within family  
Chapter Genres: Angst, Character Study, Family, Framed Story, Hurt/Comfort, Spiritual, Stream-of-Consciousness  
Chapter Characters: Eragon II, Morzan, Murtagh  
Chapter Point of View: First-person limited: Murtagh  
Chapter Word Count: 1,986 in MS Word 2003

Chapter Notes: The scene and underlined quotations are taken from _Eragon_, the first book of _The Inheritance Cycle_, from the chapter titled "Diamond Tomb." Again (and again), I warn you, this piece is a character study of Murtagh, so no actions too in this chapter – and I hope you are not yet bored by it. I hope I did as well as the previous two times, although I really hold no expectation of it, given how I have been sick for more than a fortnight already and thus my mind is still scattered here and there. (Plus, this is a very hard and controversial chapter to write about.) Please tell me what you think? Oh, and the same caution from last time applies here: the "sensitive topics" in the "Warnings" section is for Murtagh's thoughts about his father. And I repeat: Please, if you disagree with me, refrain from vulgar swearwords. As I told you in the last chapter, I always wanted to explore this side of Murtagh as well: why he said "my father" just as often as "Morzan" for a man purported to hate his father with his very being, why Morzan would do so much for him and Selena for a man purported to be all evil and unfeeling, and why Murtagh was so enamoured of Zar'roc while the blade was the one who had given him that scar. And in _this_ particular chapter, we shall see how he regards his father and the sword via Zar'roc itself. I hope I did everything the slightest crum of justice …

PS: Unrelated notes: I do not know when I can update the other stories. Currently still quite swamped and weak from stress and endless attacks of flu. But I hope you'll be … umm … a little more patient.

–

2. Irony Part the Second

Juggled back to the fore of my mind, memories of my time spent with my family, especially my father, refuse to leave me, clinging to my psyche like cockleburs to a person's tunic. Turmoil racks my mind, and it is all that I can do not to butcher the rabbits too severely. It in fact takes all of my mental fortitude not to childishly chop those dead conies into pieces and the pieces into pieces, simply to vent all the rage that I have been feeling caused by my father, my mother, Galbatorix, and other key persons in my pathetic life so far. Eragon would not take too well to that by any reason, I reckon, and that is the only motivation that keeps my hands more or less steady and 'civil' for so long.

And the lad is currently clinking and rustling and tinkling away with Brom's bags of possessions. I hold no interest in it right now, not when it seems to bring him a small sense of closure and responsibility and thus calmness, nor do I care about what he would like to do with the murderer's possessions.

But the familiar sound of a slight clanging of a sword against its sheath draws my attention promptly and inexorably to the opposite side of the cooking fire.

I glimpsed two swords around the camp when I helped the lad hurry away from the vicinity of Dras Leona, but he seemed to be reluctant to touch any of both and stowed them out of sight in one of the saddlebags. I assumed that one was Brom's and one was his; but until now I never witnessed Eragon taking any liking to his weapon nor being accustomed to having it at all times, fitting him to the stereotype of village boys in my mindview. Now I am interested to see if –

But that blade, that _vivid red_ sheath alone …

I feel my eyes first widen then narrow, as shock numbs me.

That _sword_!

I cannot mistake it for anything else. No, I cannot, not when – no no no no – but _how_?

Dread, visceral dread drenches me, even as outrage and caustic betrayal do, alongside an acute sense of longing, belonging and horror. The emotions compile and roil in my guts, make me nauseated, make me wish to rent apart the world and scatter everything on it like little nubs on a board-game. It is all that I can do to maintain a level tone when I ask, "That sword. May I see it?" My hands give a little involuntary spasm on the partially-skinned rabbit and my bloody knife, then I force them to relax as I wipe my fingers clean.

Because, even if he refuses to hand me that sword, I shall seize it by force. The dragon is not here after all, and I do not intend to harm the clueless boy anyhow.

Just … _that_ _sword_.

It is truly all that I can do, not to reflexively reach back to the beginning and end of the scar that has rent apart my back from right shoulder to left hip since I was three years old.

That sword …

Eragon looks apprehensive and reluctant, but he nods and hands over the naked blade to me anyhow, and that is all that matters to me right now. My reality has gained a tunnel view, funnelling towards the past, and I am inexorably sucked into it.

Zar'roc.

_Misery._

Misery for my father, for my mother, for myself, for countless people and _dragons_ that have been hewn down by my father with this very blade.

But also the very thing that must have protected my mother's existence and my own hidden presence, in its own way, when we fell into Father's life.

What an irony …

And _how_ did this _farmboy_ get his hands on _my father's_ blade?

_My_ _inheritance_, if I can claim nothing else of my father, in spite of –

A shudder runs through my spine. A vivid phantom pain burns down from my right shoulder to my left hip.

I focus my eyes on the symbol of the Ancient Language carved on the face of the blade near its handle, trace it with trembling fingers, try not to gag, try not to hurl the sword against the opposite wall of the cave as if it were a poisonous adder.

I trace the edges of the blade. (Ever-sharp, never-dull, Father said, when I played with the sword when I was two and bled on it for my babyish carelessness.) They bite at my skin excitedly, as if thirsty for the taste of familiar blood.

I shudder again and yank my fingers away from the edges.

"Where did you get this?" I ask again. Now it is very, very hard to maintain a level tone. And partially I do not care of how I appear or sound to Eragon right now. He just does not _know_.

He does not know how I was raised, how was my relationship with my own parents, how was my relationship with this very blade that he seems to be wielding with nonchalance.

Which ought to have been _mine_, despite everything: remnence of my father, remnence of my childhood, a twisted payback for the scar that has disfigured my back and marked me for life, a reminder that was constant in my childhood with my parents alive and intact in various guises and situations.

Always, when Father arrived home, I waited silently near where his dragon would land, waited until he acknowledged my presence, waited until he picked me up on his own volition. And then the sword would stay on his left hip while I was perched on his right hip, and his arms would curl around the both of us as if we were unseparable, twins.

As he worked in his study, I would be playing quietly with a blunted, miniature replica of the sword in his lap. Zar'roc, meanwhile, lay naked and glinting under the lamplight on the left side of the desk, as if watching the both of us.

And at two years of age, I at last knew how sharp and heavy the blade really was, when my curiosity got the better of me and I daringly touched the real version of my toy. It was the first time that it tasted my blood, gleaming as if in relish with live red as I cried out in surprise and pain.

Then, Father just blithely healed me as he told me that the blade was ever-sharp and never-dull. He put my newly-healed, toyless left hand on the handle of the blade afterwards, and I spent the duration of his paperwork time intimating myself with the worn leather-clad grip, imagining myself big enough to put my entire hand around it and lift the sword like I lifted up my toy and tapped at my father's knees when he was not looking.

And all the while, the blood I had shed on the blade gleamed at me. Father had not cleaned it away. Strange, I thought even then, as he was an overly clean and tidy person by nature.

And when I was three …

"Brom gave it to me. Why?"

_Why?!_

_Why!_

It was one of his more insane moments. He had fallen into drinking again, and both Mother and the servants and the guards had forewarned me in every occasion not to approach him when he was drunk. But then he was not behaving like in other times, where he would rage at imaginary people and throw things at the empty air. Right then he seemed to be babbling desperately and I heard the butchered name of Galbatorix in it, and vicious, heartfelt curses towards people whom I later read as Brom, Kialandí and Formora during my youth learning in the Palace's libraries in Urû'baen. But the thing that had intrigued – and alarmed – me was the fact that he was _weeping_, _sobbing_ like a wretch, and my name and "son" and "child" were thrown about rather frequently even as he scattered odd things around his study. It truly surprised and alarmed me, and the sight of his never-before-witnessed tears made me quite upset. So I came in and called for him, knowing right there and then that it was a _very_ bad idea.

He looked at me, but what I saw was the face of a vicious madman, not my father.

"GO! Go HIDE, you WRETCH!" he bellowed at me. His words and tone then were just unfamiliar and baffling, terrifying to me as his visage.

I turned around and tried to run away.

And then cold, hot, sharp, _painful_ sensation diagonal on my back. And then metal clanging on the ground, and then I was howling, and then somebody else was howling and boots thudding haphazardly on the floor, and then the all-too-familiar arms wrapped around me in a shuddering embrace, unheeding of the copiously-bleeding gash on my back. I howled again with renewed agony; but before oblivion took me, I heard my name whispered again in that broken voice – a prayer, a lamentation, or a curse, I never know until now.

And now …

_Brom_. Brom took _it_. He could not bury my father but he could lute his corpse. He _killed_ my father and then _stripped_ him of the essential thing that made him a Rider, that had been my companion since I could barely walk.

But my father – but Zar'roc – but …

I shove the blade back towards Eragon, then hide my trembling, clammy hands in the folds of my arms, acutely aware of how hard my breathing has become and how tight the muscles on my face are at present. No, no, no, no, I cannot be distracted with my own past now, not if I do not wish Eragon to know of my parentage so soon, not when my own feelings and thoughts towards the bearer of this sword and the sword itself are too jumbled and gag-inducing for me myself to muddle through, not when there are still leagues to put between myself and the Empire's troops, not when I still need to guard Eragon and his dragon safely to wherever they wish to go.

I harden my jaw, harden my heart, harden my mind, then bite out, "That sword was once as well known as its owner." My father. "The last Rider to carry it was Morzan — " And the next … should it be I? "a brutal, savage man." Half of the times, and especially at _that_ time; and it is _too_ painfully ironic that you now carry that reminder, little midget. "I thought you were a foe of the Empire, yet here I find you bearing one of the Forsworn's bloody swords!" He must _know_, must _realise_ it in any way possible, that many people will recognise whose sword it is, even if I do not reveal who I am to him or anybody else. What did Brom think, giving _this blade_ to this clueless boy without warning him whose it was before? Was he trying to destroy another youth's life by exposing another of Father's 'inheritance' in the possession of the said youth? Was he not aware that anybody bearing any slight relation or resemblance to _him_ is automatically labelled as a monstrous, vile outcast?

I cannot be more thankful when the lad takes the information as I mean him to. Wariness in life is good, especially when life seems to delight throwing ironies around along one's path, wherever it leads. Caution and secrecy can save one's life in cases like this, especially now that the two of us share something of Father's.

The two of us, sharing something of his …

Like _true_ brothers.

I never thought of that.

Perhaps, just perhaps, for now, the sword is indeed better in his keeping?

… Ironic …


End file.
